I spent the last two weeks living in a hallmark card and now I'm back to a place where houses fog over in the mornings and there are advisories about the sun, the river, crime.  The baby grew into a little person while I was away, she can run and say small words and open doors.  Two weeks is enough to grow into someone new.

I took an afternoon while I was there and I walked all over that little town I loved.  I went into all of the old places and explored all of the new corners and edges.  When I lived there, I read a shelf in the library.  I started at the left side and worked my way to the right and summer for me was peanut butter sandwiches and bits of the beach stuck inside the pages of books with plastic covers.

I bought that summer's favorite and sat on a bench off the busiest street in the downtown and even though the story was a sad one, I couldn't not smile.  I sat there in the sun with my legs thrown over the side listening to walking people and roaring trucks and the sound of old shop doors opening and closing. 

In my shopping bags I had a book on the lost boys of Sudan, a postcard I would not write, a dress I will never wear, and a birthday card for my grandfather.  There's something about this town that makes me want to be somebody else.  It makes me want to wear thinner things, write short breezy vacation notes, try to find my place in a family so different from me that I do not know what to give.

My last night there I was beginning to feel swallowed by it all and so he took me for a drive away from the ticking of the town and I felt light again.  I did not have to think about breathing, did not breathe loudly and sadly.  I couldn't sit away from him, I stood and slid over into his seat, close enough to match his steadiness.  And while I sat there, I thought that love must be something like that town.  With weight enough to fill you.  Danger enough to change you.  Expectations that can swallow you whole.  A bench in the middle of life's roars.